Japanese Woodblock Prints

BETWEEN OCEANS AND MOUNTAINS

Outside of Japan, atmospheric landscapes are arguably the most popular and most collected genre of Japanese woodblock prints, and the best-known protagonists of this genre include Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai, both of whom were early stars among European collectors.

Within Japan, this genre of woodblock prints first developed relatively late, and its significance was long overshadowed by the  popularity of works depicting actors and "beautiful women". This changed with the publication of what would become the world-famous series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo by Hiroshige, which roughly coincided with the increased popularity of Japanese travelling within their own country in the first half of the nineteenth century. These travellers brought landscape prints back home as souvenirs, and as a result the genre became increasingly popular. Artists themselves seldom had an opportunity to travel to the places they depicted, and thus motifs are often based on other prints or the artists’ imaginings.

THE CHARM OF "BEAUTIFUL WOMEN"

Women with delicately made up faces, draped in luxurious kimonos: The gaze of European collectors first encountered Japanese women in woodblock prints. More so than any artwork that had previously arrived in Europe, the prints of "beautiful women"  created an impression of Japanese women as exotic and erotic beings. Similar depictions in the works of European artists and composers would further add to this impression.

Japanese woodblock prints reveal the complex of differences between the roles of women in early modern Japanese society, and bear witness to the ways in which the lives of women varied according to social status. Not all women led the restricted existence of courtesans, who weren’t able to leave their entertainment districts, and these prints showed that women could be inhabitants of entertainment districts as easily as they could be lovers, mothers, domestic workers and fabulous heroines. Many women took part in poetry circles and in the cultural and commercial lives of their cities as patrons of the kabuki theatre.

EXQUISITE MESSAGES

Surinomo are privately commissioned prints adorned with poems and images. The occasions for commissioning these keepsake prints included important events such as name changes and marriages. Most common were surinomo new year’s greetings, which were exchanged within exclusive circles, and the interplay of poetry and image symbolism within these works were intended to subtly and entertainingly convey the messages of the commissioning parties.

ON AND BEHIND THE STAGE

Theatrical poses, contrast-rich make-up – yakusha-e actor prints were just as dramatic as the kabuki theatre tradition, and like the theatre itself, this woodblock print genre was immensely popular in Japan.

THE DEAD, SPIRITS , AND THE SUPERNATURAL

The deep-seated belief that humans share the earth with ghosts, spirits and demons was an essential aspect of everyday life in early modern Japan. Other worldly beings and human contact therewith was thus a popular subject for literature, theatre and other art forms. Woodblock print was a medium well suited to depicting these fantastic beings in a detailed and varied manner, and a wide array of spirit beings found representation in prints. The creatures depicted, in turn, became the protagonists of horror stories people told each other on summer nights.

An especially widespread theme in these images wasthat of the visiting spirit who sought revenge on those who had tormented them in their previous lives. In the stories informed by the print motifs in was  not only ghosts and demons that traversed the worlds, but animals such as foxes and racoon dogs as well, which were endowed with magical abilities, and a (blue) flame was used to signify the presence of supernatural creatures.

AN ARTFORM FOR EVERYONE

From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries early modern Japan was a world full of woodblock prints. Everything from candy wrappers and advertisements to stationary was printed using woodblock printing techniques. All considered, over 1,000 publishers released a variety of prints in different formats year after year and there was no technical difference between the production of colour woodblock prints from highly regarded artists such as Hokusai and simple advertising pamphlets.

The technique had originally come to Japan from China, and in the eighth century copies of Buddhist texts and images became the first Japanese printed material. The printing technique began being employed in nonreligious contexts in the late sixteenth century and, as it was more expedient that hand copied manuscripts, soon gained popularity as a means of producing printed matter including novels, travel guides and maps. While handmade paintings remained out of reach for the common person, the price of a woodcut print, roughly equivalent to a meal, was an art form that nearly everyone could afford.